Making Hay behind prison walls

Phil Forder says he had harboured an ambition to establish a literary event in a prison for a while, but knew exactly where to go for help when he made the decision last year to do it. "I thought the Hay [literary] festival was wonderful," he says. "It had grown over the years from a small local event to a global one, and I wanted to say to them: 'Look, you've gone around the world, but if you look around the corner here's a whole community willing to participate.'"

The community was Parc prison in Bridgend, south Wales. Forder, who had been a writer in residence at Parc and is now its arts intervention manager, says he was surprised by how quickly the idea took off. "I emailed the Hay festival organiser, and a half-an-hour later I got an email back that said: 'Let's make it work.' I couldn't believe it."

In the months that followed, Forder, with the backing of the prison governor, set about designing a programme and recruiting writers who could take part in the new festival, which he named Hay in the Parc.

Timed to run concurrently with the Hay festival, it boasted an impressive line-up, including award-winning Welsh author Owen Sheers, the poet Graham Harthill, and Guardian columnist Erwin James, a former prisoner. It also featured the current writer in residence at Parc, Caspar Walsh, a former prisoner whose book, Criminal, was published recently.

"It is rare that so many writers of this kind of calibre are in a prison," Walsh says of the event. "It really promoted writing and felt like such a huge success. It should be seen as a flagship for similar events in other prisons."

Forder agrees, saying that among the most gratifying aspects of the event was how open the inmates were to taking part in a whole variety of sessions. "We had didgeridoo workshops," he enthuses. "They are great because anyone can play them. Everyone embraced it." While many of the sessions were about new and potentially fun experiences for prisoners, Forder says the most encouraging outcome was how many signed up. "A lot came forward to take part," he says.

But, he adds, it was also that participants were able to develop a passion for writing that they could pursue long after the festival ended. "I was amazed by how many were already writing and who wanted to carry on writing," he says. "A lot were writing poetry and books."

Forder says that, in an ideal world, there would be events just like Hay in the Parc in prisons across the country. "There is so much wasted potential and we should use that."